£290m for new UK research facilities

Five new university and business partnerships are to be given nearly £300 million of public and private investment in research projects.

The projects will focus on medical research and pharma manufacturing, as well as advanced manufacturing advance materials and physical sciences.

They will tackle global challenges like developing new treatments for cancer and ensuring advanced materials can cope under harsh conditions, including difficult to access oil and gas reservoirs.

This is the latest round of projects from the £300 million UK Research Partnership Investment Fund (UK RPIF), bringing the total number of winners to 20. Successful universities have secured at least double that amount of investment from businesses or charities, together delivering more than £1 billion of new funding for research.

George Osborne, the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, said: “The spending review is about making choices, and for me science is a personal priority.

He added that the UK Government was “making difficult decisions” on areas such as welfare – which has been cut under a recent review - so that it “can invest in areas like science”.

The five projects, representing £72 million of public support and attracting £219 million of additional private investment, include a £33 million partnership between UCL and the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust in the Institute of Immunity and Transplantation.

This will enable world-leading research and clinical trials to develop new treatments and patient therapies for a range of chronic diseases, such as cancer, HIV and diabetes.

It will also facilitate new £34 million partnership between the University of Strathclyde, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Novartis, Cancer Research UK and others.

This will build on the EPSRC Centre for Continuous Manufacturing and Crystallisation, a world-class facility to accelerate innovative technology delivery and establish new supply chains for medicines.